Learn to size your bets correctly in poker

The reason I decided to write this little piece about correct bet sizing is a simple one. Making incorrectly sized bets is quite probably one of the most frequent mistakes poker players make, and yes, it is more frequent than the playing of too many starting hands, and the chasing of draws way too far. The way to tell the difference between a good player and someone who is a decent TAG but not quite there yet is through the size of their bets. Beware of the player who always seems to make the right size bet in every hand in which he’s involved.

Now that you know what a plague incorrect bet sizing is: don’t fall into the same trap yourself. Here are a few tips to help you avoid losing money on incorrect bet-sizing, as well as ending up looking like a donk.

The most important thing when you’re about to make a bet is to know thy goal. That’s correct. You need to know exactly what you’re looking to achieve with that bet. Are you making a value bet or are you trying to make your opponent(s) fold. Sometimes a bet can be a probing move too, one meant to make your opponent reveal his true colors through his reaction. Weird as it may sound, most players think little in terms of goals when it comes to betting. Online poker interfaces make all those half-pot and ¾-pot buttons handily available, so all players have to do is to mash some buttons, which is exactly what most of them do indeed do.
Once you set your goals and establish the bet sizes you deem correct in certain situations, it is time to spare a thought or two on mixing up your game. Don’t focus so much on your bet sizing that you forget to mix things up a little. That’ll only make you easy to read and in the end: quite predictable.
Suppose your goal is to make your opponent fold. While you aim to be as intimidating as possible through your bet, you need to keep other things in sight too, like potential damage control. Your opponent may have a hand, in which case you will not be able to intimidate him regardless of the size of your bet. Therefore, the rule of thumb here is to bet as little as possible to get the job done. How much is just enough to result in a fold from your opponent? That’s your task to determine. Mind you, I’m not urging you to min bet every single time you intend to make someone fold. That would be the surest way of turning you into a fish. What I am saying though is that no matter how enticing that “bet pot” button looks, you may want to tone it down a little and hit the ½ pot button instead. More often than not, opponents who can be persuaded to fold will do so when faced with a smaller than full pot size bet just as well as they do when faced with a full pot-size one. By showing a little bit of restraint, you’ll save money when you do get called.
The other scenario is when you make a value bet: you aim to persuade your opponent call. This one’s a little more sensitive matter. Your goal here is to make the largest possible bet that your opponent will call. How exactly does this translate strategy-wise? In the long-run, you’ll be better off making bigger bets that get called less often than you are making smaller bets with a higher probability of yielding a call.

Your reading skills will be extremely important in this case. Some players find the pot odds offered by smaller bets impossible to resist. Others will always regard a large bet as a sign that the bettor has the nuts. Again, you are directly responsible for determining how your opponents will react to differently sized bets that you fire their way, and for making the right move based on your reads.
The weird thing about proper bet-sizing is that pretty much everyone knows the theory around it – which is far from rocket science anyway – yet people fail to put that knowledge to use time and time again. Knowing something is one thing, putting that knowledge to use is different. Think about it like this: all it takes to take your game to the next level is to spare a couple of extra thoughts on each bet that you make. That’s really not a whole lot of effort and it does indeed pay great dividends.